Hey everyone! I’m Viraj, and I have partnered up with Concrete Jungle this semester. In this blog, I would love to share my experience with the organization and the projects I undertook. Volunteering with Concrete Jungle was a big learning experience for me. During my time with Concrete Jungle, I worked on several projects that allowed me to contribute my skills and time to their mission. One of the most interesting and satisfying tasks I performed was analyzing their data and making sense of volunteer journeys using machine learning algorithms.

The first step in this project was to clean various datasets, merge them together, and conduct exploratory data analysis. This step helped me to understand the quality of data and identify general patterns. Next, I used deep learning algorithms to cluster similar journeys and identify patterns in volunteer behavior. This helped the organization understand how volunteers engage with the organization and identify areas for improvement.

Additionally, I volunteered for Freedom farmer’s market pickups every other Saturday with Elena. We collected left-over fresh produce from the Freedom farmer’s market and delivered it to a nearby soup kitchen called Intown Collaborative Ministries. It was a great opportunity to explore the market, talk to vendors, and meet many generous people. On average, we collected 30 pounds of fresh produce every other Saturday. This was a very rewarding experience because it allowed us to directly impact the community by ensuring that fresh, healthy food was not going to waste.

Finally, I also worked on the organization’s Doghead farm. I worked on terracing a slope on the farm with a few other volunteers. This involved leveling a hillside’s ground in sections so that the flat areas stack like stairs. This was a physically demanding task as we had to dig and unsoil the inclined part and level it with the flat portion of the farm, but it was incredibly satisfying to see the progress we made. It was also a great opportunity to connect with other volunteers and learn more about sustainable agriculture.

Overall, I believe that my engagement with this organization made a meaningful impact. By collecting and delivering fresh produce to soup kitchens, I was able to directly impact the community by providing healthy food to those in need. Additionally, by using my quantitative skills to help the organization analyze their data, I was able to provide valuable insights that will help them improve their volunteer engagement efforts. I believe that my final project can contribute to the organization in the future. For example, I was able to find some irregularities in the data collection process, which the organization can fix and would help them in the future. Moreover, the volunteer clustering algorithm I designed could help Concrete Jungle predict volunteer’s next move. Then the organization could explore various incentives to nudge volunteer behavior and maximize their full potential.